Orange County solar lien search

Where do you search for a solar lien in Orange County?

In the Orange County official records, which the Orange County Comptroller keeps through its Official Records Department. That is the part people get wrong. Most Florida counties put recording and the courts under one Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, and Orange County does not: the Comptroller is a separate elected office, and its ownAbout Us pagelists recorder of official records among its roles. If you went looking at the Clerk of Courts first, nothing was wrong with your search. You were at the wrong counter.

The state rule points there too.Florida Statute 679.5011sends a financing statement to the office of the clerk of the circuit court when the collateral is goods that are or are to become fixtures and the statement is filed as a fixture filing, and sends every other case to the Florida Secured Transaction Registry, the state index at floridaucc.com. Panels bolted to a roof in Orlando, Apopka, Ocoee or Winter Garden are fixtures, so a clean search at the state registry clears nothing. The county record is the one that counts. The version of this rule for every state is on where to search for a solar lien.

How do you search the Orange County records?

Open the Comptroller'sOfficial Records Searchand accept the disclaimer, which is a page in its own right rather than a line of small print. Then pick Basic Official Records Search. It gives you Either Party Name, Grantor and Grantee as three separate boxes, plus Document #, Book and Page, a Document Types filter and a Recording Date Start and End. Put your name in Either Party Name on the first pass. A filing can index the homeowner as grantor or as grantee depending on who prepared it, and that one box covers both sides at once.

Leave Document Types empty on your first pass. It is a type-ahead box rather than a visible menu, so guessing at a label you cannot see will quietly filter out the filing you came for. Run the name wide, then read the document type column on the results for anything described as a UCC, a financing statement or a fixture filing.

How should you type your name into the search?

Last name first, with no punctuation, if you want an exact match. The search's own help text is blunt about it: enter Franklin Benjamin and you get Benjamin Franklin, not Franklin Roosevelt. Tick Use Advanced Name Searching and the box starts reading operators instead, which is where this search earns its keep. A star is a starts-with wildcard, so Frank* Ben* catches Benjamin Franklin and Ben Frank. A dollar sign means sounds like. A question mark stands in for a letter you are unsure of.

The one worth knowing for a lien search is the tilde. A tilde and a number is a proximity search, and the help text gives the exact case you are in: MARY MAXWELL~1 returns MARY L MAXWELL and MARY ELIZABETH MAXWELL as well. Solar paperwork is signed with a middle initial about half the time, so one proximity search does the job of three guesses. Search both names on the deed too, since a filing made against one spouse will not surface under the other, and the disclaimer page itself tells you to try all possible spelling variations.

What is the Property Fraud Alert, and should you use it?

It is free, and it is the half of this job you can stop doing by hand. You register a name, and the Comptroller notifies you by email or telephone whenever a document is recorded in Orange County under it. The alert email carries a direct link to the document in the official records, so you read the thing itself rather than hunting for it. Register on the Comptroller'sProperty Fraud Alert pageor on 800-728-3858. It watches names rather than parcels, so register every spelling you have signed with, and register the trust or company name as well if the house is held in one.

What do you do if you find a solar filing?

Open the image and read who filed it and what it covers. Printing it from your own computer costs nothing here, so there is no reason to pay before you know what you are looking at. If it secures a solar loan you have paid off, ask the lender for a UCC-3 termination and have it recorded, then come back in a few days and check that the release is on the record. If it protects a lease or power purchase agreement that is still running, ask the provider in writing what they need for a sale or a refinance, and ask now, because their reply is the slow part.

The reason it matters at a closing is the buyer's lender.Fannie Mae's Selling Guiderequires a UCC search on a home with solar and requires a filing that ranks ahead of the mortgage to be subordinated before the loan closes. The closing-table version of this is atselling a house with solar.

Does every kind of solar leave a filing?

No. Loans nearly always do, leases and power purchase agreements often do, and cash purchases and subscriptions leave nothing on the record. The breakdown is ondo solar panels put a lien on your house. We sell subscriptions, the no-filing kind, so read it knowing that.

Looking at solar for an Orange County home?

Run your bill through the estimator. It takes about a minute and a real person follows up with figures for your roof. Read the Florida page first: it covers who insures the panels when a hurricane comes and who this is a bad fit for.